Twitter is normally the place to be when it comes to trolls and, right now, Lionel Messi is the man on the hot seat. The 31-year-old recently announced his return to the national fold with Argentina and actually played for the side on Friday.
However, his return didn’t go according to plan as Argentina were soundly beaten by Venezuela in an international friendly. Messi played the full 90 minutes but was powerless to prevent the collapse of his national team.
Venezuela opened the scoring in the 6th minute through Solomon Rondon, who exhibited great aerial awareness to put his country in the lead. Argentina struggled for cohesion and fell 2-0 behind towards the end of the first half.
Back from the break, Argentina halved the deficit after Lautaro Javier Martinez was set up by Lo Celso to score. However, any hope of a comeback was thrown out of the window when Josef Martinez made it 3-1 to Venezuela.
Despite starting the game in a buoyant mode, due to the return of Messi, it was once again a very disappointing performance for the Albiceleste. The Barcelona star endured a frustrating night and was constantly forced to drop deep to try to dictate play.
It is worthy to note that Messi was in imperious form prior to the international break. The 31-year-old took centre stage as Barcelona sealed qualification to the quarter-final of the UEFA Champions League with a 5-1 win over Lyon.
He followed up with a sensational hat-trick against Real Betis in LaLiga last week, before joining his international teammates for the Venezuela game.
But after a disappointing outing, the world of Twitter has not taken it lightly with the Argentina captain. Following the country’s 3-1 loss to Venezuela, many took to social media to troll Messi:
Let’s take a look at some of the best tweets: